


the scientific improbability of the sound of silence

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: (now edited), Alien Mythology/Religion, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Carlos is the Best Human, Cecil is Inhuman, Cecil is the Voice of Night Vale and the Voice is a huge dork, Kinda, M/M, Memory Related, Scientist Carlos (Welcome to Night Vale), So is the Scientist, The Voice of Night Vale, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-08-30 19:56:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8547013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: "In the Beginning, there was the Desert.Well, no. Sort of, but not really. In the beginning there was the Voice. It was smooth, low. It tried for entrancing but really, it cracked a lot like a teenager's and squeaked embarrassingly."__or, Cecil is the Voice of Night Vale, and the Voice is Old and Terrible and Lonely. Carlos is a Scientist, which is to say that he Finds knowledge and lost secrets. Together, they are something extraordinary.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a study of what it means to be the Voice of Night Vale and possibly a rant about how awesome and beautiful Carlos is, but now it's a Thing with backstories and worldbuilding and Cecil the Voice and Carlos the Scientist changing Night Vale for the better, and also cuddling a lot.

 

 

In the Beginning, there was the Desert.

Well, no. Sort of, but not really. In the beginning there was the Voice. It was smooth, low. It tried for entrancing but really, it cracked a lot like a teenager's and squeaked embarrassingly. Luckily He – It became He during a growth spur around the time the icebergs up north started to thaw– was alone. The Voice spoke without words, with something purer than Words, to Himself and the Void hovering comfortably over and growing roots on a planet of blue and green and occasional yellow. The Voice knew without having been told that this Void was his to populate and shape and cherish, and so He did. Tried to, anyway. 

(He tried. That's something, right? That's some thing, in the total sum of Existence, trying _is_ one thing. But what thing is it?)

If there Was anything before the Voice, it was all silenced. His first Words were about sun and heat and discomfort, skin that became wet and air that became heavy and cold and warm and heavy. Concepts more elusive than stardust, harder to capture than the ash of a supernova imploded. But the Voice tried again and again, a few more adjectives relating to things that were not yet and might not ever be, and there was sand. After, there was a desert. Everything else came After.

The Voice (low, smooth, entrancing) was excited by His success, and went one to create the Flower. In the process He got a little carried away from Himself and created the surprisingly hardy cactus. Trees followed, bushes. At one point the Voice realized that if it stopped Speaking about them, the plants died, so He created water. Water begot clouds, which the Voice had great fun shaping, and then the Moon and the Stars to keep it company, and the Sun, to mix things up a bit. Turns out, the Sun and the plants got along real well, and together with Water they developed a complicated form of alimentation based on light and nutrients. The Voice didn't really understand, but it was their business and He was very proud of His creations. Even when they proved themselves to hold more sentience than he had expected, and a bloodthirsty instinct to destroy all opposition, He loved them and they loved Him, and His Words.

The Voice didn't create humans, per se. Humans as a rule were a prevalent Idea, and tended to show up at the most unlikely place in the most inconvenient of times. The Voice liked them, though. When some of them got lost (humans always get lost) He took them in His Houses and its Gardens of colorful flowers and pointy cacti. They drank His water and praised His Sun and his Stars. 

And humans were loud. He loved them, and He loved them. 

Time went on. Where did it go? Where did it come from? The Voice wondered, but it did not seek answers. He was most pleased with His land. Time went and went.

That was all there was, for a long time.

 

 

 

Carlos the Scientist is a combination of some dependable facts: a burning curiosity, peanut allergy, a perpetual crush on Isaac Asimov, good hair, a talent for finding things.

The last one is the most important. Well, the hair is important too, but for different reasons.

He is very good at spotting lost glasses and forgotten car keys, and had once been the terror of schoolyard Hide and Seek. If there is a treasure, a particularity, something that for some reason hid in secrecy, Carlos is bound to find it.

It is very inconvenient on the social side of things, but useful for research. He can't complain.

He finds Night Vale by accident. His tenure at the University no longer holds the excitement of earlier years. He had taken a sabbatical, put his most prized possessions and best scientific equipment on the car and driven off into the sunset. He hadn't been worried about what he would find, only knowing, as the experimental method had shown time and again that he would find something. For the first time in a long time, Carlos' hands tingle with an investigator's suspense.

It will be extraordinary. He can feel it. Right here, in the back of his mouth and the curl of his hair, his wrists, his curling toes. _Extraordinary_.

 

 

The Multiverse is infinite. It hungers, a ceaseless eternal hunger that feeds on metaphysical marvels. Gourmet potential, as it were. It left snacks like blackholes and the freezing heart of galaxies to younger Universes.

The Voice is aware of His ultimately very minuscule position in the great scheme of things, and how much more delicate and the greater danger of the horrible depths of the Multiverse that His humans are in. He tries to protect them even as he teaches them to fulfill their potential, go far, further, but carefully, cautiously.

Humans are very brave and very stupid, though. They are curious. Perhaps it is that that drives them to trip onwards towards terrifying enlightenment while the Voice stays behind, whispers, greets, grieves. None came back. But it's alright, the Voice Whispers to Himself. There are always the Lost, the Wandering. The ones that He Calls to Him and the relative safety of His Void, the City it has grown into. 

Only the Lost come to Night Vale. 

 

 

(Carlos crosses the town limits, absent-minded, and steps on the hot ground, purposefully, and The Voice is almost speechless. Cecil stutters and blushes and smiles helplessly, hopefully. He has never loved a human more. He has never loved anyone more.)

 

 

There are many Words for what Carlos is, in many languages. Some ancient, some yet to be born. He is fluent in three languages (English, Spanish, some bad Latin) and in all of them he calls himself a scientist, and most of the time he is one. He acts like it, anyway, follows the doctrine of research and hypothesis and theories. He has to occasionally stamp down his hubris and remind himself that the certainty that he will find a result doesn't mean that he will find the right result, even if he usually does. You can never be too sure, with science. You can never be sure of anything, not completely, with anything, but especially science.

Even so, he is rarely wrong. It's like Carlos is in synch with the world on a basic level, to a certain point anyway, and he can find connections where most people see disjointed thoughts, objects, people. Patterns, puzzles. It's never boring – most things are more complex than people give them credit for, and it usually ends up with him going on tangents thinly related to the original question, but it's that focused seeking that he loves.

He drives like that for days, long hot days with the desert around him and a strikingly blue sky above and ahead. He's thankful for the many bottles of water he had brought as it gets steadily hotter, waves of heat blurring and shimmering over the road. Raw energy at its best.

The car purrs and roars in the quiet spread of sand. It stretches on farther than the eye can see, beyond the horizon – beyound the physical and metaphysical understanding of the term – lonely, lonesome, desolate. But not silent. Never silent. 

He drives onwards into town and his shoulders coil and uncoil with the certainty resounding from the base of his neck down his spine: _here is a treasure, here it is hidden and secret, here there will never be an end to discovery._

_Here is what you have been seeking without knowing. Here it is, found. Go forth and bring light to the unknown._

 

  
In the Beginning, there is the desert. After, after, there is the Voice. In the little radio, in the air rushing into the car from the open window, in the heat waves and the asphalt. The Voice is not there and then it is, an entrancing presence conquering an  undiscovered absence.

He proclaims His eternal love for him and Carlos doesn't hear. Carlos, swept away in a tide of questions and impossibilities, a wayward sun, sacrifices and secret police, doesn't notice it much. It is Cecil he notices, eventually, occasionally, until he becomes a fixed point of his focus. Until he lifts his head and finds himself looking for Cecil, searching, yearning, and not stopping until he finds him. He is an illusive presence but never an absence, always there, in words and voice and thoughts.

Carlos isn't looking for him, except that he is, except that he always has been and never did. However way you frame it, it's a sweet, sublime discovery every time.

 

 

 

It's not the Beginning, not the End, but it's the beginning of something new, something unspeakably extraordinary.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos, though. Carlos was an anomaly. Not Mona Lisa, but Da Vinci. Not a creative force, but not descructive, either. Interpretative, maybe, but not quite. 
> 
> (There were many Words for what Carlos' was, and the Voice knew all of them. 
> 
> No, really. _All of them ___.)

 

 

It wasn't like Cecil remembered _everything_. Every thing was a _lot_ of things, and he couldn't even remember a considerable majority of things. The human perception filters of him physical shell constrained the amount of memory input that could be computed at any given time. He didn't even remember what he was, with some moments of flickering, horrified understanding  and occasional bouts of total amnesia. 

In theory, the Voice was him and the Voice was an all-knowing deity of uncountable power who accepted the indignities of a human existence as an amusing and engrossing farce. In practice, it meant he was great at drunk poker and terrible at sober memory cards.

He knew without knowing the nature of his town (his his _his_ ), knew all its people, to a certain point, in general terms. Beyond the reach of linear time, thought, or indeed, linear anything, he could discern the individual existence of the fine grain of sands by the dunes, the ephemeral presence of the Glow Cloud, the soft wrinkles in the face of the Faceless Old Woman Who Lives In Every Home. They were to his perception unique blobs of sound and colorful scented recalls, past and the precious nothingness of the now. They were paint on a canvas of Void and Potential, and he loved them as a whole and loathed them occasionally and most of the time, sometimes, even liked them individually.

Carlos, though. Carlos was an anomaly. Not Mona Lisa, but Da Vinci. Not brushes of metaphysical pain of a metaphysical canvas of Nothing, but the hand that held the brush and painted. He tried and sketched and never discarded a mistake when there was a lesson to be learned. Not a creative force, but not destructive, either. Interpretative, maybe, but not quite. 

(There were many Words for what Carlos' was, and the Voice knew all of them, as He knew all Words. 

No, really. _A_ _ll of them_.)

 

And the Voice that was Cecil, who was terrible at remembering and great at retellings, adored him from the first. And from the first, too, He worried at Carlos' looking at His town and not loving and loathing and occasionally liking it, as he did. Cecil was afraid that one day Carlos would notice the cracks in him, the wavering in his voice that was more Voice than it had been in so long. He had been so good at being Cecil, at being Himself and Answering to Cecil and eating by osmosis and pretending to sleep at night in his cluttered, lonely apartment, but Carlos' eyes and hair and mind and heart brought out a well of emotion that humankind was not built to contain.

Mostly, Cecil was afraid that Carlos (lovely perfect extraordinary human Scientist _Carlos_ ) would be satisfied with experiencing Night Vale as nothing more than a find.

 

 

  
"You're not like me," he tells Carlos, one damp night. It is as much an exhalation of delight as well as a statement of fact. Carlos likes facts.

That Cecil is not like others is a fact. That Carlos is not like others is also a fact. Those facts are similar, but not alike. Likeness implicates sameness and they are not the same. How boring would that be?

There is a storm rolling over town, a cozy blanket of rainless clouds, green lightning and whispering thunder. They are sitting in the roof of the radio station, where Carlos had wired his science instruments and jotted down readings from the small screens. His round handwriting curled around the gs and as with his excitement.

That night's what her broadcast had predicted Lightening, in a acoustic cover of The Wanted song.

It is Carlos' birthday, by the count of time and calendar he ascribed to; the storm is his birthday present.

Carlos had stopped writing down numbers and diagrams. Now he stands beside Cecil, an arm around his waist, neck craning upwards to stare raptly at the crisscross of lights.

It is possible that the lights were green because that is Carlos' favorite color, and making shapes of pliers and microscopes because those are his dearest possessions. It is possible that it was not a coincidence, not when it made Carlos smile like that, squint like that. It was possible that Cecil is Remembering, slipping up, far more than he wants to and _far_ more than he is supposed to. 

What could Cecil say, but that he is in love?

Cecil stares too, at the curve of his jaw. What a magnificent, lovely jaw it is. As is the curve of the chin, the hint of stubble, the lush soft mouth that opened and moved perfectly to say:

"I don't think there's anyone like you anywhere, Cecil. Even in Night Vale."

Cecil smiles, slow and sad and more than a little smitten. "Oh, Carlos," he sighs, "You're so smart."

Some emotion must have seeped through his Voice (Carlos, perfect as he was, had always heard the Voice even if he was strangely immune and it didn't fully touch him, rather caressing, rather pressing against him and basking in his existence) because Carlos turns away from the show of impressive natural might, if Cecil said so himself, to look up at him with a similar expression of rapture.

"You're different, Cecil. That isn't bad. It doesn't mean you're alone."

"We are always alone," he replies, pressing a hand to Carlos' cheek. "Time is a terrible lie and space a treacherous lie and everything is a lie, Carlos, if you look close enough."

Carlos kisses his palm, shockingly warm mouth on cold skin. Small sparks arise from the contact; he ignores them to look at Cecil, never up, never down, just to look at him, Cecil, and say, "I am here. Is that a lie?"

And Carlos smiles, smitten and slow and still sad, but happy, too. "No. That, sweet Carlos, is not a lie."

(Something ancient and besotted trembles, somewhere deep in the dog part and down in the wastelands and high by the light's over Arby's and close in the breath inside every Night Valian's lungs, deep in the fleshy inconsistencies of their hearts.

Something heaves. Something hardens, mellows, grows in power. Memories uncurling, uncoiling. Breathe in, breathe out.) 

 

 

Night Vale was many things: toxic, deadly, sandy, terrifying. Impossible. _Fascinating,_ really, something not of this world. 

Cecil felt almost homesick. Sick for a home he hasn't had in years and the one he does not have yet. He had been momentarily afraid than his Science Radar, which was the proper scientific name thirteen-year-old him had coined for his improbably successful gut feeling, would disappear when he crossed the borders of the town. There was something about Night Vale that screamed _end of the cosmic trail_ as much as it murmured _beginning of chaos_.

Luckily, if anything the science radar became more acute. To the point of being overwhelming, sometimes: there were so many anomalies in Night Vale, and the most amazing of all was how not anomalous they were. It all went together, patterns that came together to form one seamless, apparently senseless but possibly sentient whole.

The day he realized the impossibility of Night Vale existed due to a external allowance of a higher power was not just one day. It was all the days, countable but numerous moments squinting at petri dishes while the radio rambled on the background. Cecil speaking, sharing wisdom and news and warnings. Cecil's voice, in every house, vibrating in the air even in the absence of a radio or air.

Carlos had always been good at finding things. Lost keys, scattered papers. Pets, pens, people. Secrets. There was a reason he was not on speaking terms with one side of the family and distant with the other. Carlos was good at picking up the mundane and finding the extraordinary, because it was always there. Because it was a matter of perspective, and seeking.

The downside was that he was good at losing things, too. Too focused on following trails of wonders, he did not notice what was around him nor did he take care of what was his to nurture. Night Vale lived and thrived in the middle of an unconquerable desert and a Nexus in the Multiverse. It did not need taking care of. He wondered if anyone had ever thought to do it anyway. 

 

  
When he came home he hugged Cecil, hard. Then kissed him. Then hugged him again.

"What was that for? Not that I'm complaining, I'm _so_ not complaining, but Carlos — are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Carlos said roughly. He remembered the night of his birthday in the station roof, the electric shock against his mouth. Cecil's smile, Cecil's trembling smile. "We're fine. You don't need to say anything, alright? I'm here. You don't need to say anything."

He could feel Cecil swallow. But he didn't speak out, only whispered, "I know," and was quiet.

And they were quiet together in the balmy night, and it was good, and sad, and dawn did not came by on time, for the first time since Carlos had moved in with Cecil.

Carlos put on his lab coat the next day. Kissed Cecil goodbye (once twice thrice for luck and love and no lies) and went back to the lab. There were experiences to run, discoveries to be made. A town to take care of, in his own Carlos way. It wasn't much, but he had it in good standing that it was perfect just the way it was.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because Carlos understood. Cecil was of Night Vale, more than any other, more than the town itself. It was possible that Night Vale was of Cecil, not the other way around. They all owed him everything, except Carlos. Carlos owed nothing to no one. What he gave he gave freely.
> 
> Cecil did not understand that. Cecil had been made to know without understanding, and that would be fine. If not knowing was what he wanted, Carlos would have happily lived his life by his side without pursuing that line of Research. But Station Management did not have the power to live on without devotees, so it went and pulled power from its Creator, and that too would have gone unnoticed if Cecil had not wanted to notice. If he had not wanted to Remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: mentions of the suicide of a minor character, eldritch abominations, memory and mental health issues.

 

 There is a tub running, full of water. It has been running for a long time. Outside the room with the overflowing tub a child follows the little stream of water on hardwood floors. It wets his feet and leaves little pinkish stains as he walks towards the door.

His name is Cecil Gershwin Palmer. It is a name, a designation, so therefore that is who (what) he is. That's how names work (lie), isn't it? (you know it isn't).

That is who he is, all her has been and all he will ever be.

Right? (Oh, if only.

If only, child)

Right.

 

 

 

His mother had the Sight, which is to say that she Saw, which is to say that she was blind. Metaphorically, of course, the human mind can only withstand so much, but literally too. Cecil grew up knowing not to move things around, knowing to be loud so she knows what he's doing. It's his only way of helping so he is loud a lot, but Mother does not like the sounds. She likes the silence, and silences without Cecil best of all.

Abby tried to make it better. Tried, tried, Abby did. For what that's worth. She was young. So was Cecil.

Cecil grows to hate the silence. Along with the prophecies of his death and a propensity for drinking to forget, it was the one thing his mother left him that most shaped him. The silence, and the need to fill it.

There was never a time he didn't feel achingly alone.

  
(Cecil never knew too much. He knew just enough, and not all that much of it. He was not like Steve Carlsberg. Perhaps he had been, once. But then again, maybe not.

Knowledge had always come easy, to his family. Not easily, not painlessly, but easy.

Sybil Palmer had been a surgeon, once, before the Sight left her blind. She was good at cutting away unwanted growths. )

After Sybil Palmer's suicide, every one in the household was taken for Reeducation. Standard procedure, you understand. The neighbors didn't make any noise about it, nor the school. What was there to be done?

The children came back eventually. Children usually do, it's the adults that are harder to reeducate. They did come back to their mother's flat, rooms like a muted still from a past life neither of them could remember very well. Someone had cleared the blood. That was something. Someone had taken away the glass shards --

They lived there, in those eggshell walls, painted over to cover the prophecies Sybil had left over mortar and ancient wallpaper. Neat stern Abby, such a serious child, but dependable, and little Cecil, of course. Not so little now, but that happens, sometimes, during Reeducations. Something must have gone wrong with the program, though, because he should have returned good as new, better, but Cecil Gershwin didn't speak for years, after.

Night Vale bowed under endless gusts of winds, after, sand that scraped at cement and skin and asphalt, howling day and night for years, decades.

(Time passed away, a death too immediate for morning. It twisted over itself, fetal position, babe on womb, corpse on tomb. It spoke, a little. Time always does, in the silence.)

But then Cecil looked into a mirror in the school's bathroom, or maybe it was a college bathroom, or the radio's restroom, and his voice came back. And he Knew, only he didn't. Because Cecil Gershwin Palmer was his mother's son, and Sybil had the Sight, but her mind hadn't lasted under the strain. His mind, young and already shaped by external forces, gazed upon the mirror and the Name it shouted and in a bid to escape the terror of the Truth and the crushing Sound and Truth and Belonging of the Voice, it too because reflexive. 

(And if old Bernard died that same night, if he was buried under a slab of granite engraved with _Herald of Night Vale,_   _Voice Regent, Honorably Discharged,_ then Cecil brough flowers to the burial and made himself Forget.)

The game of mirrors goes on, more dangerous, sharper-edged. An image out, an image in; the truth chased into the dark. Voice opened even as it swallowed Words.

The winds abated. There was sound, for a time, mandated sound constrained by human understanding and stubborn blindness in the name of survival and not splintering an already cracked mask of an identity. It is hard to unearth a secret you are not looking for, so it is better not to look at all.

Oh, better, easier. But knowledge has a way to come out and come back, around certain people, in certain places.

 

 

  
Go to your bathroom, listeners. Close the door, make sure to turn your mirrors against the wall, if you have any. Turn on your bath tap. Watch the water rise, slowly at first, pipes complaining like old bones in a worn body, then faster. Heating, smoke surprising you with how fast it rises. Breathe in the smoke, listeners. Lit it sooth the ever-present pressure in your chest, the relaxing of muscles more tense than you are aware of for reasons you do not like to acknowledge.

Look around. White floods you sights, smoke thicker than fog. Look through the veil of water, clean the sweat and the droplets of condensed water from your face. The water keeps running from the tap. It is overflowing, listeners, the tiles hard to distinguish beneath the heavy liquid mass. It is spreading through your bathroom floor, soaking the rug and your toes as well. It is hot, scalding hit on your tender flesh.

The water is always overflowing somewhere, listeners. Even in the desert, where there is no water, there is always something overflowing.

 

 

  
"Oh, by the way," Cecil said. Thought, actually. Carlos had been eager to study telepathy in person once Cecil had off-handedly mentioned how easy it was to breach the human mind, if one had the patience and the natural aptitude. "I will be regaining my memories soon."

Carlos himself had close to none telepathic resonance, so he had to question whether he was warping the connection, but Cecil had assured him his own telepathic broadcast, much like Night Vale's radio (exactly like the city's radio) was chronically incapable of breaking down.

"Should I be worrying?" He asked cautiously. He had found out that it was easier to frame things in relation to his own well being if he wanted Carlos' to answer honestly. Unless it was something he honestly didn't think mattered - it mattered to Carlos, but making him understand that was a work in progress - of if thought too dangerous for him to know, in which case he trusted Cecil's judgement to let him know if and when it was necessary.

Still. Cecil had issues about memory and the lack or existance there-off. His voice was not as smooth as he would like it to be, showing the cracks only Carlos could spot.

"Oh, not at all. It's just the temporary gap in interns messes up with Station Management's base of devotees, and it takes a bit more out of me. Anyway, I was just calling to tell you that I'll be probably be remembering some stuff. The taste of water, my mother's name, the shape and limits of my physical form. The works. And I might forget some ordinary stuff too, but that's normal."

Carlos scrubbed his face. The windows of the lab were closed to keep out the swarms of homicidal bees from last week, but the price of safety was spending most of the day in a lab with inefficient. air conditioning. "Okay. Tell me if you start forgetting or remembering anything important."

"Sweet Carlos, I can never forget the truly important knowledge. It haunts every moment of my existence," Cecil replied blithely. He was earnest too, but then again he usually was. It was far more endearing than it had any right to be.

"Will the grocery list you left with this morning haunt you? Because we are low on fruit, and you know how much I love fruit in my yogurt."

Cecil sighed on the other end of the connection. It was a pleased mental sigh that made the hair in Carlos' arms rise in reaction. "That I do. Berries from the invisible orchard?"

"You know me so well," Carlos said, trying to send the mental equivalent of a smile. It worked, if the happy hum warming the back of his awareness was anything to go by.

That night Cecil came back with the apples, plus wheat-free pizzas from Big Rico's, and they ate dinner sitting in the living room sometimes sentient sofa. Cecil's questions on his loss of memory and their returns were subtly and not so subtly diverted.

("So you will be regaining the memories you have lost, or is it unrelated?

"About that -- Carlos, look, It's snowing!"

"It's eight degrees outside, Cecil."

"What does that have anything to do with snow?")

He let it go. Cecil was generally honest about being the Voice of Night Vale and what it meant, in the sense that he would answer truthfully when pressed to answer, but he said it left him feeling staticky after. Disjointed from his body, and he liked his body. Anyway, most of the time he seemed to willingly suppress the knowledge of his true nature well enough. Carlos didn't judge, and tried not to pry any sore spots. He didn't always manage it, but they worked through it. There was no previous pattern to say they wouldn't work through this too.

They ended listening to a mixture of Carlos' favorite songs, an eclectic mixture of opera and rock, and Cecil's playlists of the best weather reports he had broadcasted over the years. Cecil listened raptly to his recounts of Carlos' punk phase and cooed at his stammering blush.

"I bet you were just adorable," he said, then took a dainty bite of pie and cleaning his mouth. Cecil had really lovely manners; he claimed it was a holdover from the Mandatory Etiquette Classes that had only stopped on 1941.

"Not likely," Carlos snorted on his soda. It was a soft lilac and glowed in the low lighting even through the skin of the drinker, so you could see its travel in the digestive system. It tasted of strawberry and cold mist and he loved it.

"Oh, come on. We all had our embarrassing phases – why, I even admit that I might have gone overboard on the whole Dandy thing, and it took me centuries to admit that. How bad could your dubious fashion choices have been?"

"Horrible," Carlos argued, but he was laughing. "Awful. I had my hair in a mohawk. A blue one. "

He had used the hair card to distract Cecil and possibly cause him to make that cute aghast face, but instead he gave him a long, thoughtful look. There was desert heat and the promise of caressing summer winds in his eyes. "You know, mohawks are kinda sexy," he said, "and you look great in blue. The merciless shade of the blistering sky and distant star fire– yes, you look great in blue."

Carlos swallowed. "I have a blue lab coat in the wardrobe."

Cecil smiled, all sharp teeth and irresistible charm. "Go get it. Fast."

There wasn't a lot of speaking after. The next morning Carlos kept an eye out through the morning chanting and breakfast, in case Cecil's memory started to slip, but nothing happened besides him forgetting to put the towel back in place, but he did that all the time.

Carlos went to work. And if his new side project involved gaining whatever information was there to be had on the Radio Station, its interns, and how it related to the history of Night Vale, then that was his business. And who could fault a Scientist his Research?

That night after Cecil came home with pizzas and apples again. Then he started getting things wrong in the broadcast. He never got people's names wrong, but he confused who was mayor right now and called Old Woman Josie 'Missy Josie'. He called for interns that never came. The little reporter's notebook he took everywhere was filled frantically and at all times, pencil smudges littering his fingers as he frowned down and scribbled rapidly. His metaphors because stranger and darker, his philosophizing about the universe less hopeful and more rambling, helpless. A recording, broken, disjointed.

 

  
Carlos enjoyed listening to Cecil speaking, be it on the radio or chattering beside him. He loved his voice, even before he had any inkling that it was a Voice, and he loved what Cecil said. He was smart, Cecil was, thoughtful and funny and considerate about the strangest things, in the strangest, most wonderful way. In person, his voice was more personable than in the radio, but no less sonorous. Carlos had not known he had made any previous estimations, but when they first met in person that was what stuck with him: how the sounds he made seemed occupy more space than his physical body.

Perhaps it was because even his silences were powerful, even if that had been more because he was staring at Carlos and blushing that because he was particularly dignified. To Carlos, who had never been loud, being around someone who could shape sound so skillfully was fascinating, thrilling, sometimes jarring, but also comforting, in a way that had to do only with Cecil himself, not just his voice or his words. It had taken a while to get used to, though, in the early days of their relationship, when everything was new and they were still beginning the long process of learning each other. Because Carlos was used to the silence, to isolation, and so was Cecil, but unlike him he loathed it. It left his wan and worn out, sickly even.

It had caused a rift between them, when they had first moved in. Cecil had been happy, nervous, chattering, and Carlos had asked him to be quiet while he worked. Cecil got more and more miserable and Carlos more anxious.

It had come to an head when Cecil stopped speaking. Simply stopped talking to Carlos unless answering a question, and even that it was difficult. It wasn't a problem with other people, and Carlos had thought maybe he was being petulant, but no. It was something that happened to Cecil, when his voice was stifled. He had nearly thrown up when Old Woman Josie had explained him why.

There had been apologies, and Carlos had felt wretched with guilt and Cecil had trembled and cried quietly and then Carlos had cried, not so quietly. They had talked about it, laid ground rules: Carlos would only take work home when it was a real emergency, not a normal mundane Night Vale emergency, Cecil would communicate when the silence was bothering him, and when the silence was bothering him but he didn't want to speak.

 

  
Out of the radio station, too, he made mistakes. He forgot to bath and eat. Not in the sense that he forgot to eat, but that he forgot he needed to eat. Only he didn't; if anything he was healthier, the purple flush in his cheeks more evident, his long braided hair showing an autonomy of movement Cecil rarely allowed himself. He was alternatively confused or cheerful, but always with an undercurrent of desperation to it. His hands, usually moving around with enthusiasm or deliberation, fluttered weakly or simply stayed still and limp in his lap. 

One day Carlos came home to find Cecil scavenging around the house, trembling like a leaf and looking for mirrors, the mirrors had cut open Ma. It took hours to make him still, stop shaking, and longer for him to remember whatever it was that had happened to his mother. His stricken expression when he recalled whatever it was that had hid away from his consciousness for so long would stay with Carlos for a long time.

"The mirrors, the mirrors," he whispered until Carlos finally soothed his to speak. In the morning he woke up on a good mood, no revealed memories or remains of terrible realization, and for once Carlos was grateful for the memory lapses. 

 

 

Researching was in Carlos' bones. Anyone who knew the Guterrez family knew they were the researching kind: from his sister Anita, a brilliant Detective, to Tia Leonor who studied ancient methods of weaving to Abuelo Rodrigo's spectacular collection of poetry books with personal messages, all the Guterrez had their favored field of research. It was unclear whether it was Carlos' had that had chosen Science or the other way around, but there had never been doubt about where he got his talent for hounding facts and discovering his way through a mystery.

There was a rhythm to it. Getting the groove going, as his cousin Paula the cellist said. A song in the cacophony, or in the silence, and we translate the sounds into symbols.

He couldn't speak for the library, but Night Vale's town archives had nothing on the Guterrez family archives, either in horrifying organization systems or in idiosyncratic documents. The building itself, a brownstone whose stone was not actually browns but an a russet tone, with furry, organic rug covering the floor, was located to the left of the Council Hall, and mostly left alone. Considering the city wide horror towards reading, knowledge, and how heavily censored the archives were, it was not surprising.

There was a lot of paper being shown and passes authorized, but eventually he found himself sitting on an old swivel chair, huddling over a low table, corridors of shelves casting long and fidgety shadows. Carlos kept close to the dusty lamp and paged through files.  
  
If he thought about it, plenty of avenues for rationalization, but there was no way that it wasn't an invasion of privacy to read the civic files about his boyfriend's family. He couldn't even say it was for Science, even if it was, partially. This was about finding what was causing Cecil remember previously erased or repressed memories, and how it tied to the Radio Station, but Science was what Carlos did even when it wasn't. He was a Scientist: it was in the way he thought, how he felt and moved, how he knew to go down into the darkest, dustiest spot in the archives to find Cecil's information.

He didn't go there, though. Instead Carlos kept to the upper levels and read about Sybil Miriam Palmer, surgeon and prophetess, who had taken all the mirrors in the house to her bathroom, closed the door and turned on the tap.

The file said it had been her young son who had followed the trail of red water.

 

 

Another time, Cecil didn't come home. He was supposed to be out offering and stapling 'INTERNS WANTED' fliers around the barista district and by the university, only he didn't come home at the usual time. Carlos had panicked, almost called the Sheriff's Secret Police, until one of the Erikas came by and took him to Old Woman Josie's house. She nodded at him from the porch and pointing inside with a thumb, where he could see Cecil sitting in the kitchen table having cold tea and wheat-free digestive biscuits.

The angels who could not be referred as such were there as well. Cecil appeared to be having a philosophical discussion with them. Carlos loved how Cecil thought, the vastness of his concepts following a somewhat parallel of Carlos' own understanding of the world, beyond the scientific and the unexplainable. Cecil made their smallness palatable, with his cheer and compelling words and his unique self.

It came to him for the first time, hovering on the doorway of Josie's kitchen, the possibility that his smallness might not be proportional in size to Cecil's.

"Yes, but what makes a person a person?" Cecil was asking one of the Erikas, the shortest one whose glow was particularly black and void-like. "Is it the mind, the truly minuscule sense of identity that is tied to the physical? Is it the soul? Because I think I know what souls feel like, and you don't have one. I don't think I have one."

Cecil sounded scared. And sad, achingly so, and Carlos wanted to come inside and touch him, comfort him somehow, but the Erika's presence was too overwhelming. Or he thought it was the Erika. The ancient scroll he had found in the lower level of the town archives gave him the impression that qualifying presence was different than quantifying Presences.

Cecil was rubbing at his eyes, leaning into the wing that was lifted to curl carefully around him. The Erika was communicating without anything that Carlos could identify as noise. The dark wings pressed softly against the skin under Cecil's neck, rubbing gently at his back.

Cecil sniffled and curled towards the Erika slightly, a small movement that made his look strikingly vulnerable, wrapped in the appendage of a gigantic creature of Grace and Unearthly Power. His shirt of garish floral print was rumpled. "That's very kind of you to say, but I don't think the term person really applies. Oh, not to be humanocentric or anything of the sort, but it's not really the Right Word, you know? I guess I just haven't been dealing with that very well."

The Erika gave him a look Carlos could not hope to decipher, but Cecil rolled his eyes in a companionable fashion and took a sip of the iced tea. "Yeah, but if you're going to call everyone with Presence a Person --" Erika moved their facial appendages with a series of clicking sounds, "--well, alright, I see what you mean. I'll stop nitpicking."

And then he and Erika lapsed into a long dead dialect that sounded like clicking and the howling of wild dune-beasts. It was quite interesting, linguistically speaking, even Carlos could tell and he was totally terrible at humanities, and he enjoyed listening to it until Cecil noticed and beamed it him. It seemed, however, to cause a reaction of intrinsic fear and terror in Night Valian hindbrains. This was a problem, since Cecil was unable to speak on another language for days after conversing with the Erikas. Listening ratios plummeted that week, and that only made the memory overdose and sudden blanks worse. 

He tried talking about it again, and it didn't go much better.

("Look, I know you think I'm making this up, but it's really snowing!"

Cecil, I'm right beside you by the window. It's not snowing. You can't make it snow just because you say it does."

" _Actually_ \--"

"Cecil. No.")

The barrage of unearthed understanding left Cecil more and more tired. Not physically, not even mentally. Just tired. He babbled often, about everything he remembered, and then suddenly he could become quiet and withdrawn. During those times Carlos could only sit beside him and speak for him, about scientific articles and his life, his family. Anything, to cover the silence. They usually went to bed early on those days, except when Cecil drank. The wine bottles, used left aside for their more ambitious culinary experiments, turned up empty around the house, until Carlos found Cecil staring forlornly at the last of their white wine.

Carlos had been uncertain what to say, but Cecil spoke first.

"It doesn't work," Cecil said sadly. He wasn't dragging his words, his eyes were focused, and when he picked up the nearly empty bottle it was with average coordination. "I can't even drink to forget anymore." He had looked at Carlos, slowly, sadly. "I can't even forget anymore."

 

 

 

It was late at night, and Cecil was sleeping alone. Probably not sleeping, he rarely did these days, but thinking and drowsing and trying desperately not to remember. Carlos regretted having to leave him there alone, even though he hadn't lied when he had needed to gather information for important Reasons. Cecil couldn't be blamed for not concluding that he meant Science Reasons, when Important Cecil Reasons ranked as high as Important Science Reasons these days, if not higher.

As a Scientist, Carlos' field excursions usually involved more communication with objects than with people. He liked it that way. People were interesting, of course, but he found them confusing in groups and intimidating individually. He found it easy to relate to them, but only in general terms, and it was hard to communicate or strike any sort of long-lasting relationship.

In this, as in so many other wonderful ways, Cecil was an outlier.

But this was hardly a regular field excursion. This was about Cecil, and his well being, and so Carlos would speak with who or what he needed to speak.

Station Management was as terrifying as he had been told to expect. He had a whole plan on how to tackle this - interview, as it were, involving kevlar body armor and on offering of a huge, invisible pie, as well as a can of toxic gas he had created as an accident, but that he was 83% certain possessed enough salt and acid to seriously harm an eldritch abomination. He had made himself remember everything he knew of Lovescraftian creatures and how fiction related to the very real being that lived and ruled Night Vale. He had even tried to subtly ask Cecil, but he had only said Station Management was ancient and ruthless and had Opinions on proper journalistic materials and funding. Then he had started fidgeting with his braid, and Carlos had asked about Khoshekh instead.

Carlos knew quite a bit about meetings with demanding and miserly superiors. This was nothing like that. He had little basis of personal experience with beings of the Eldritch category, but when he stepped inside Station Management's lair he realized at once that offerings would not work. Carlos was not of Night Vale. This being owed him nothing.

"Release him," Carlos, Scientist in a magically warded lab coat and protective goggles said. "Release the soul of Cecil Gershwin Palmer."

"The soul of Cecil Gershwin Palmer is not your business, Interloper," Station Management said with a voice that was like the space beyond the space between stars, Nothingness without a memory of Light. It rose in its terrible shape, tentacles flared and uncoiled and extended, roving rows of eyes and gory, poisonous teeth that threatened Carlos with evisceration by darkness, a slow crushing asphyxiation on his own guts.

But it was a voice, not a Voice, so Carlos stood his ground and spoke again, steadfast. "The soul of Cecil Gershwin Palmer is not rightfully yours. Any contracts became Void the moment his Voice returned. Release him."

And something strange happened, something Carlos had not counted on. His own voice, always too high to be brave and too wavering to be lilting, resounded through the stained walls of this lair not with depth but with Resolution. The feeling he wore like a lab coat while Researching, the gravitation field of Determination to Find, lifted his voice higher, made it ring out like a bell. Pure of purpose and of mind.

Station Management slunk down. Tentacles receded. In the dark Their Presence was no less menacing that before, but not so all consuming. Carlos breathed harshly, but all the air left his lungs when They spoke.

"There was never a soul of Cecil Gershwin Palmer as my vassal. Nor is He a vessel. To Him I turned in need of Faith, for he is the Maker, and none has Faith like the MakerHis is not a Soul that Swears and Owes Fealty, Interloper. His is the Voice, and the Night, and the Vale. His the Desert and the Stars and the Moon and the Sun. His I am, and all my bethren. Who are you to come speak in His Name, Seeker from Outside?"

 

 

 

The beginning of the End came the night Cecil called the Erikas by their names on air. Not as Angels, but their True, individual celestial Nominations. No one, especially the Sheriff's Secret Police wasn't pleased to have all radios, surveillance audio equipment and phones in the town breaking down and letting out wisps of myrrh-scented smoke.

There were no fatalities, but the air was singing. Apparently the old silver town bell had been kept in the radio studio, because it, along with all the bells in town started tolling, a heavy sound that thrumming in bone and blood. The desert sand shifted, restless, awakening.

Cecil stood by the kitchen table, staring at the molten remains of the house phone. Carlos had already appropriated the house radio, which he was prodding with a screwdriver. It seemed to have melted completely, very impressive considering the military grade materials used for the Sheriff's Secret Police's issued house phones. He was tempted to ask Cecil access to the studio station, which was untouched by the unleash of divine grace and ancient wrath contained in angelic names, but he wasn't very pleased with his boyfriend at the moment.

Coincidentally, they worked as broadcasts as well. Ergo the invading garrison of solemn angels come to converse and perhaps kidnap to the Erikas hack to whatever realm of reality they came from.

"I mean, if they wanted to go incognito they should have gone by a better alias," Cecil griped. He was a talented bullshiter, a skill which extended to blaming Desert Bluff of all evils and putting the blame of his actions neatly in another's shoulders. Carlos suspected he was used to getting away with it too, what with being a Voice with hypnotic, mind-warping powers, but he was having none of that.

He put down the box of tools roughly on the kitchen table and picked up the amplifying glass. "You're slipping up, Cecil. And that's okay, that's not your fault. Denial and blaming the Erikas is." Carlos looked up and gave his boyfriend a pointed look. "It's your responsibility to fix it, bunny. Fix it."

Cecil rolled his eyes and blew a noisy sigh, but acquiesced. He went out and only came back early in the morning, but word of mouth was that the angel garrison was gone and the Erikas were safe and sound, going by the joyous beam of black light pouring from Josie's backward.

"See? How hard was it?"

"I hate inter-universe diplomacy. But fine, it was fine." Cecil rolled his eyes at the wall, but softened when he looked up at Carlos. "Thank you. For, you know. Not letting me a be a brat. Forgetting makes me testy, but it's no excuse."

Carlos extended a hand and Cecil held it at once, squeezing gratefully. "Hey, I'm not gonna put up with a jerk. I know forgetting is awful, but we'll get through this, okay? You need to talk to me, though."

Cecil bit his lip and looked away. When he spoke again it was in a low tone, more careful than usual. "I was afraid that I might - hurt you. With my voice. It's been a bit irregular. I know you know that," he added at Carlos' raised eyebrow. "Everyone knows that, it's bad. But not as bad as it could be, all things considered. Probably. And you're not from Night Vale."

"No, I'm not."

You're not one of mine, Cecil did not say. You are your own, and so it should be. Carlos was fairly sure Cecil couldn't go around picking up strays and joining them to the web under Night Vale's jurisdiction, at least not as this moment, but he was aware that his own position in the arrangement was irregular. Not precarious, but with the potential to be. If he were anyone but Carlos, and Cecil was anyone but Cecil.

He very decidedly did not think _anything._ Cecil waw very much a person, whatever else his true nature might be.

Because Carlos understood. Cecil was of Night Vale, more than any other, more than the town itself. It was possible that Night Vale was of Cecil, not the other way around. They all owed him everything, except Carlos. Carlos owed nothing to no one. What he gave he gave freely.

Cecil did not understand that. Cecil had been made to know without understanding, and that would be fine. If not knowing was what he wanted, Carlos would have happily lived his life by his side without pursuing that line of Research. But Station Management did not have the power to live on without devotees, so it went and pulled power from its Creator, and that too would have gone unnoticed if Cecil had not wanted to notice. If he had not wanted to Remember.

"I just — didn't know what would happen."

And Carlos smiled. Cecil blinked at the sight, clearly surprised. He had never seen that smile before; Carlos had had no reason to show it to him before, because Cecil had never been involved on his Research. That smile was the mark of a Guterrez Researcher, a seeker, a scavenger of knowledge.

Out of all his family, Carlos was the only Scientist. He was the only one bold enough and stupid enough to try and Research the world. But try he did, had been all he had done for so long. Science had been his Sun and his Moon, the experimental method his Stars.

Now Cecil was here, in his life, the house the shared. His braid wrapped around his neck life a scarf, end smoothing against his side in an unconscious gesture of comfort. Now here was Cecil, who did not remember how old he was and had memories he did not allow himself to comprehend, who occupied space with sound and sound with space, who was smart and funny and precious far beyond his value of fascination.

Night Vale was a place for the lost. Carlos had been questioning the Moon and the Sun and the Stars for far longer than he had realized, and so he had found it, this place of Knowledge and Power and Silence. He had found Cecil. It was by far the most worthwhile discovery he had made in his life.

"Silly radio host. Let me remind you something."

Carlos stepped closer until Cecil was leaning against the wall, and the stepped closer still. "You cam me er know everything. I know that, because trying to know everything is not just what I do, is what I am – a Scientist. I Research. I look for facts, the truth even where it is, whatever it is. I hunt solutions and propose hypotheses and I find them. I create solutions."

Their noses were close enough to touch. "You are not a problem, Cecil, and you are not faulty. You are more than a problem to be solved. You are You, and the you You are is bright and caring and loud. And that is alright."

To be honest, Carlos hadn't expected anything to come out of it. Maybe it was his words, matter-of-fact like when he had faced Station Manager. Maybe it was because it was him, just him and Cecil and the terrible potential of knowledge cradled between them like in a jar. 

Whatever it was, the metaphorical jar broke. The literal ones too, broken by a sound more than a sound, a sigh and a scream and cry.

Cecil stopped breathing, with no apparent consequences to his physical wellbeing. His face was flushed purple, his eyes as well, something sonorous in the terrible void of them. It hurt to look at him, a dissonance between the space he should occupy and the one around him.

He didn't look afraid anymore. He looked at Carlos, not lost but Found, and Carlos held him close and looked back.

Outside, Night Vale was silent. And then, finally, _finally_ , it wasn't.

 

 

Listeners, do you remember your bathtub full of running water? Maybe you don't. It is possible that you might have forgotten about it and that it has been running all this time. Well, go back inside the bathroom. Careful, don't slip on the puddles of water. It must be higher than your ankles by now, higher than your knees and spreading through the thin defense of the door, insidiously into your room, your kitchen, every wall of this house that is your life. Leave it be. You can mop it later, but first the water has to run its course.  
  
Do you remember the mirror, the one you most certainly were not supposed to look at? Turn it around. Yes, I know. You're scared of what you might see. Turn it around.

Whatever you see, remember that it is only you. And it will still be you. You are indelible, listeners. You are a person and you can't be washed away.

Look. That bathtub has stopped roaring now. You're inside an ocean of your own making, but you aren't drowning.

 

 

 Carlos was a Scientist, and so his life was based on facts. Hard facts, tested and worn and solid. Many of them had been put through the grinder since he'd come to Night Vale, but the important ones remained, chipped but stronger than before. That was something he had always appreciated about Science, how belief systems had to shape up when challenged or discarded. It could be painful, world-changing, nauseating. But at the end of it you came our with better basis and a footing that was, if not sure, clearer. 

The Intuition was something different, harder to quantify, much less qualify. He had tried, and he could work with it. As long as it aligned with the logical course of action, he followed it. 

His life was also based on building hypotheses. Those too had to be proved or discarded; it was long, harrowing work, often useless, but he loved it. It was satisfying, more than any physical activity, better than most accomplishments. He had known, when making Cecil's smile on their third date had made him feel as happy as when confirming a groundbreaking theory, that this was a question he would never stop asking, a line of study he would pursue again and again if it meant Cecil would smile again like that, lopsided and delighted.

The question, of course, was not how far Carlos would go to make Cecil better, or the definition of what that better might be, or entail. The question was not even where they would stand after it was done.

Carlos had his theories, and his facts, and a gut-feeling that told him the man he loved was not a human at all. It wasn't very logical, but considering recent paradigm shifts and previous data, it was legitimate to conclude that things would work out.

If not, well. They'd just have to create more data to experiment with.

 

 

Somehow, they ended up curled up under the sheets. Fully dressed, breathing close. Cecil was glowing and yielding under Carlos' hands, flesh wavering in the lines of reality. He had once marveled at how Cecil filled space with his Voice, and now he realized he really did fill space with sound, a whole body of music and howling and murmuring.

He wondered vaguely if he was the only one who heard it, by proximity or affection, then put the thought away. The bells rang a similar tune, as similar as man-made objects could come close to, and it did not matter anyway. The only thing that mattered was him and Cecil under the cotton sheets, holding close, breathing closer. Neither of them Lost or Forgotten, but Found instead, in a revelation and a home of their own making. 

Softly, pale flakes of snow started falling on the streets, the roofs, the window sills. Neither of them noticed.

 

  
 


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

  
To be honest, Carlos had thought he would be arrested by now.

People tended to realize, that when pressed, he could find anything and everything. Oh, he tried to keep it on the down low, but it was just one of those things, and he had stopped trying to ignore it years ago. At the end of the day it was far more practical to follow the Intuition, and not worth the consequences of ignoring it. 

He was careful . He had to be; every good Researcher knew their value and that others could and did use them for their own reasons. Carlos had had offers from most national intelligence agencies, some of his relatives worked for them. The Guterrez family had a long and proud history of working either for the Big Brother or against the Big Brother. Being a scientist had only made him more useful to shady corporates. His Science Radar had pinged so much those first weeks he could barely sleep, walking around his flat and making lists of things that were lost and then going around picking up everything and putting it in the right place. It was a habit that meant his living spaces were always organized to perfection. It hadn't been enough, so he'd made lists of what he knew and didn't know about Night Vale and its people, the invisible house and the earthquakes-that-weren't.

The moment he'd realized the full extent of dystopian surveillance in Night Vale, he had been worried that he'd be kidnapped to be interrogated, or worse, work for them. 

That never happened. In hindsight, the fact that the Entity that had created the town and existed now as the community radio host had a very vocal crush on his had probably something to do with that. Reality had tended to rearrange itself around Cecil's Words, even when he hadn't Remembered.

Eventually his team came to know that it was better to ask him to look for lost paperclips and samples, because he would invariably open the right shelf and look at the right place. After the thing with the neighbor's bloodstones and the parking ticket during his first month in Night Vale, he had ended up friends with Michelle from next door, and she liked to have him quiz her for her college exams.

"How do you always ask the right questions?" She wondered, scratching a cheek. Her eyes were wide and had dark rings beneath them.

Carlos just shrugged. "It's a knack. Do you want to review the dates or the names first?"

She'd blinked and turned back to the papers, but Carlos kept the conversation in mind. Michelle hadn't been too surprised, so it was possible it wasn't rare for people in Night Vale to research instincts or something of the sort, but rare enough for her no remark on it.

Time passed, or at least a sequence of mostly linear events did. Carlos nearly died, went on dates with Cecil, researched, went on dates with Cecil, saved the town with the power of science, moved in with Cecil. He still helped Michelle Ngyen with her studies and tried not to discovered any illegal secrets, with dubious success. If these days the things he found were more often than not the ones he was looking for, at least they were always interesting and often useful.

Then, of course, Cecil started Remembering. Cecil was a journalist, he understood the importance of chasing the most reliable information and upholding a truth, or at least the safest variation of the Truth, but it was something else to have it thrust upon you. Carlos was used to finding secrets you didn't want to know, was aware of how they could dominate one's life — he had revealed things he had no business knowing when he was younger, to rather destructive results— but that didn't seem to be Cecil's case.

Carlos did what he did best. He looked for information and he found it, as he usually did. He had a small, tiny breakdown, which he felt was justified and reasonable, considering. 

"Carlos?" Michelle asked, squinting at him. The light from inside the house cast long shadows to the outside world, and he guessed it probably gave him a frightful appearance. Or maybe with was his barely contained - fear? worry? deep existential terror? he wasn't sure. 

"Hi, ah, Michelle. Do you mind if I come inside?" 

"Shouldn't you be home with Cecil?"

Carlos' face did a complicated thing. He tried not to convey his state of panic at the name of his boyfriend. His boyfriend who he was pretty, pretty sure was the creator and possible incarnation of the most scientifically interesting town in the world. He must look really pathetic anyway, because she let him in and herded him to the armrest. He sat down, got up, sat down again. His hands only stilled when she pushed a cup of half-drunk tea in his hands. It was cold and tasted of hot stones. He gulped it down in one go and nearly broke the cup putting it down in the nearby table.

"You're lucky I only have decaf, you look like you'd fly away with some real caffeine. You okay?"

He looked up at her. Michelle was sort of his friend. She'd been a good neighbor and he'd liked spending time helping her study. Most importantly, she wasn't close with Cecil, so she would be objective, or at least not so involved.

At least he wasn't hyperventilating anymore. He could barely remember the drive from the Radio Studio to Michelle's, it was a miracle he hadn't crashed.

"Sorry for barging in so late," he didn't know the hour because hours didn't work in Night Vale and oh God he really should stop thinking about that now, "I just, uh, please. I need someone to ask me questions." 

"You want to be sure you're right?" She asked shrewdly.

He nodded, a little embarrassed. He'd never had to explain this to anyone. Not even Cecil. "Being asked helps."

Carlos could find whatever it was that he wanted. It didn't mean he was lazy or that he did not work as hard or harder than other scientists. It just meant that if there was information, important, inconvenient world-changing information lying around, he _would_ Find it. 

It was the same thing with mistakes. He could spot weakness, in people and in arguments. He didn't like that part of his Intuition, but he was a Researcher. And furthermore, he was Scientist. A Scientist never ran away from the Truth.

She frowned, but shrugged with the flippancy of someone studying and surviving college in Night Vale.  There was a chair. beside the one he was sitting on and she plopped herself down. "What kind of question?"

Cecil put a hand in his labcoat pocket's and pulled out an illegal pen and a contraband notebook. He wasnt too worried she would tell on him, since Michelle's own illegal writing set was all over the nearby table. Besides, he had a lot more pressing worries in his mind. "Can you ask me what I know about Cecil? Cecil Gershwin Palmer?" Maybe full names mattered. Names mattered, in old folk tales, didn't they? To the fair folk, and trickster gods. Titles mattered more, but Carlos was not ready to go around throwing titles. Not yet. Maybe not ever 

Michelle lifter her eyebrows. "As long as you keep it discreet."

He laughe a little maniachally. "Believe me, that's so not the question right now."

"Alright, then. What do you know about Cecil Gershwin Palmer?" 

 And Carlos, hand trembling, put pen to paper.

 

 

 

  
"There had to be something Before." Carlos said determinedly, ignoring for the moment the way he could hear the big _b_ like it made it a concept separate from the normal meaning. "There _had_ to be."

"Sure, if you want to be linear about it." Cecil answered, making it very clear linear frames of time was something he didn't have in great consideration. This, at least, hadn't changed. "There was Void. And the Earth came along eventually, but I wasn't there for that. Then there was Me, and I made the Desert."

Carlos had to bite back the instinctive sure you did. "Where did you come from, then?"

"The Void. _Dah_."

"You've already answered two other questions with 'the Void'. It's not sticking."

It was late, later, and Carlos was still lying in bed with his boyfriend. Memories or no memories from eons gone by, Cecil was much the same. He still said dah like a bratty teenager, for one thing. His feet were still terribly cold, too. Carlos rubbed them with his, for completely self-serving reasons.

Cecil curled closer, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them they were still that strange hue —not the absence of color, that was white, but the overabundance of it. Through a rainbow, darkly.

"I can't remember," he confessed. Carlos sobered immediately, the loose tentative peace and fascinated curiosity he had been feeling crashing down into familiar apprehension. But Cecil pecked his forehead and waved a hand away, saying, "not like that. It feels more organic. Childhood forgetting, the gradual erosion of first memories."

"The Void gave birth to you?" Carlos asked, forehead smooth again. "Just like that?"

Cecil made a sound in the back of his throat, giving off the strange impression of _old stone made soft sand_ and _warm winds under a tired sky_ with some _rueful adoration_. Carlos wondered whether the strength of the impressions depended on proximity and decided to study the hypotheses at a later time, if Cecil was amenable.

"It's long story," Cecil whispered.

Carlos picked up his hand and kissed his knuckles. Once, twice, thrice. "You do not have to tell me. But I'm here, if you want to tell it." I will listen, he did not say. I will stand beside you, in silence or shouting, for as long as I can, The words were stuck to his throat, the sweet ache of them pressing behind his eyes. I will listen to you always, and join my voice to yours as long as you want it. 

But maybe Cecil heard him anyway, because entwined their fingers and cleared his throat and the Voice told the Scientist the Tale of Night Vale: 

 

 

Night Vale was named so for how it looked from above.

Once Void and Matter meeting together in a Borderland, it had been molded into the shape of a friendly desert community and grounded into the fabric of Earth by its young Voice. There were, in fact, mountains in the edges of the desert horizon, and some of them had once been close enough to create a vale, but the slope in terrain it referred to was a metaphysical one. From a higher position on the Multiverse, Night Vale was a spot of Nothingness between high lights, the wavering dimensions of its host planet covering it like the sides of a bowl filled with rippling, dark liquid.

There was a Sun in its sky, of course, a Moon and Stars and electricity, too. It's Night was a fabricated one, a wall disguised as a fake-screen of Void that covered its borders. In the incredible variation of the 'Verse, Night Vale was the echo of a myth, a haven for the Hunted and the Lost, a hidden in the folds of a marvelous little planet by a red dying star. A safe harbor for those who needed it, peaceful and full of life and mostly free of fear.

Those desperate enough to search for a place out of a youngling's star-tale didn't mind that the Voice of Night Vale was somewhat sentimental and fairly eccentric. Not surprising — Voices were always the most capricious sort of Presences, after all. Too distant from affairs of the Multiverse, they were, the isolation gave them strange airs and bad manners.

This One was a nosy One, keeping an eye and sometimes a tentacle on mortal business with curiosity and care, but that was to be expected. Voices were either apathetic or meddlesome, and desert Voices always a bit more eccentric. He let Night Valians rule the land and themselves, and helped out when he wanted to or needed to. There were always its Mouthpieces to work as heralds, and the occasional Prophet to avoid great disasters. It was usually enough.

Until it wasn't. The land grew in buildings and people and laws followed, as they often do. Mortal laws, useful enough in their way, as long as they were decent. There was strife in the stars, another space war brewing. Fear led the actions of the people of Night Vale, and the Town that was supposed to be a safe place from the Outside became a fearful land from the Inside.

The Voice had never been adverse to sacrifices -- they were great, awesome really, very heartwarming -- as long as they were voluntary. Or, you know, part of warfare, there were warfare clauses for most anything. Otherwise they were rotten, because there was power in a violent bloodletting or death, but not the sort of power he had any use for. He was building a town here, a neutral ground, not any of that secret wars nonsense.

And anyway, unwillingly given tokens just didn't taste the same. They were too sweet, cloying, and left a bad melon aftertaste. Yikes.

He was a bit baffled by the new rise in other sorts of rituals, but not bothered at first. Creativity was the harbinger of change, and the Voice was foolish enough to feel safe and hopeful. Certain rituals were stamped out, others put in their place. The ones who kept to the old ways or spoke out disappeared.

He didn't even mind so much that they started to forget Him. Well, He minded, He minded a lot, but the fear was worse. It was an insidious change, slow. Measures taken to protect citizens turning into stifling violence and mandatory lies. Treacherous Words, and Words, as any Voice knows, when badly used hold more power than any sacrifice. The Voice was not happy with these changes. His people, for they His before any Council Management or Vague Yet Menacing Government Agency, were afraid. And so was He — almost, very nearly Afraid.

And, of course. Nothing seeps away Faith away as much as Fear.

 

 

 

 

Cecil spoke carefully. Slowly. Carlos listened, very still. Cecil spoke with his eyes closed, and hand under his cheek, face creasing the pillow beside Carlos. He looked, in that moment, exactly his age, the age of Night Vale since the Beginning and all the lonely epochs after.

"There was no actual birth, that implicates a body, but it is from the Void and the Earth that I came from, yeah. It happens, in Borderlands like Night Vale. Where the Void meets a Planet, Time and Space and Matter clash oddly. the Void's Nothingness gets caught in the wrinkled Matter around these Borderlands, creating sentient and, eventually, independent Presences. This is how the Voices of Borderlands come to be."

Cecil's breath hitched, a stifled sob Cecil was close enough to feel. "We are the Middleplaces and the Crossroads and we are alone, always, before the Beginning, after the End. We exist outside of the Void and the Matter but feel its Silence. We listen to the Echoes of a Multiverse we can never belong to fully and we Speak, out of desperation, curiosity, anything to be ours anything not to be alone in the Silence."

"And when mortals, so small and lost, ask us for sanctuary, we say yes. And even when they Forsake us and become Deaf to our Words, we watch over them and protect them, as long as we are able to. As long as there is Silence, Voices will speak out. I never thought they would try to _Silence me._ "

"So you hid as a mortal," Carlos deduced, mind running and eyes wet for the sadness and fear that made Cecil tremble, frail in his embrace. 

Cecil's reply was very solemn and a little awed. "Humans get Lost, yes, but sometimes they get found, too. They can _Find themselves_. They speak, and they are so small, Carlos, so weak and tiny and meaningless, but humans never stop rebelling against the Void. And I was so weak. I wanted to be loud like that."

Then Cecil looked at him, opened his eyes and smiled his most heartrending Cecil-smile. "And you, Carlos. You're more Human than most Humans put together."

"I'm a Scientist," he said, like it was a title. It was too late to pretend it wasn't.

"Yes," Cecil agreed reverently. "You are a brilliant, beautiful Scientist. And you're _here_."

Carlos didn't know what to say to that. He was here. He had found put what - who- _Who_ Cecil was, and he had driven while hyperventilating and he had gone to Michelle Ngyen's and written down everything he knew about Cecil Gershwin Palmer. And then he had thanked her, driven back home, and lied in bed, watching Cecil pretend to sleep, terror and horror and love in his heart for this creature that was lost and loud and joyful.

Then, some days later, Cecil had spoken in Angelic Aramaic and Carlos, never good at holding secrets long term, had pressed him against the kitchen wall and watched him Remember. Watched as the man he loved was swallowed by a Presence he did not know.

Because Cecil wanted to Remember, and Carlos wanted him to be happy, or at least whole. So he had gone out, unearthed secrets that should have been better left alone, and Awakened a being that was older than him, older than this Town. Who had created Night Vale.

But Cecil had never been broken, either. That had been Carlos' mistake, overlooking that. Cecil was too much himself to be anyone else. Even if he was something - _Something,_ with a capital  _s_  - else, he was Cecil.

Had always been Cecil, since the Beginning, and that was more heartbreaking than he thought it would be. He knew how much Cecil hated being alone.

He didn't have much of an idea of what to do about Cecil and Night Vale, about himself, Carlos the Finder, who tripped over mysteries and brought old pains to the light of day. But he understood, now. So he tangled their legs together and kissed Cecil's cheek, his nose, his mouth.

"I am here," he said  "I am here," he promised. "Is that a lie?"

"No," Cecil rasped, "that is not a lie. You are here. So am I." And Cecil sounded so surprised, disbelief still coloring his Voice, and Carlos could feel it because he too could hardly believe that any of this was real but by the Earth, it was and he was so grateful.

Carlos wrapped himself tighter around him, a vine curled around a column, even as Cecil craned his head to kiss him fully, a living fragile thing turned towards the sun, and that, too, was not a lie.

 

 

( "Is it still snowing?"

"What - Really, Carlos? Yes, it's still snowing."

"Will it continue to snow indefinitely, or –?"

''Not sure. It'll snow as long as we want to stay here, I think, but it's not really on purpose. I've been a human for some decades, you know. I tried to make arrangements, but something had to give while I was away, and when I remembered, well. It was either snow or a real earthquake."

"Wait, the earthquakes no one can feel, that was you?"

"It wasn't me so much as it was the lack of me. A Borderland without a Voice does not always go so well, even if I still the Voice, technically. Too much pressure, the weather and the earth needed release. You're the Scientist, you explain it to me. I'm not in charge of everything, you know."

"Oh, I know. Say, run that by me again, please. What did you mean about pressure and release?"

"I mea- oh– oh yes. _Carlos_.")

 

 

"Even the ley lines are in a sad state. Far too organized, honestly, don't they know that's harmful to the land? And to me too, it's itchy."

"They probably do know it. Some of them, at least." he added apologetically. Carlos liked to be precise. Night Vale was a clusterfuck, even ignoring the apparently mystical conflict of powers going on. He really didn't like it when Night Vale hurt Cecil. Or when Cecil was hurt, period. Even if Cecil had apparently created Night Vale, that only made the potential for hurt all the greater. The things you create are the ones who can destroy you, and all that.

"It might take some tries to repair the ley lines," he said thoughtfully, considering what he knew about a mystical concept he would have and had scoffed at only two hears ago. Then, he added, because it felt like it had to be said: "Things won't ever be as they used to."

Whatever that had been like. Cecil was much freer with his answers, now that he actually had them instead of a conditioned fear of accessing them, but some of the raw facts were still a bit in the air. He expected it would take a while - or not, time being as it was in Night Vale -for both of them to get their heads straight about all this.

That was perfectly fine. He liked figuring things out, and one of the many best things about Cecil was that they both liked figuring things out together.

"They should not be as they were before. But much was lost, and much must be paid." This was said in Cecil's most menacing tone. Carlos patted him blindly, going for the arm and ending in the wrist, held it. Cecil relaxed easily at the touch.

"My vengeful God," Carlos replied, only a little drily. Cecil smiled back at him, too giddy to be serene. Carlos' heart did that fond burst of warmth it did around Cecil, especially when Cecil was soft and good-humored laying beside him on the bed.

"Only when I need to be. I like to think I am mostly a laid back god. An powerful yet personable God. Friendly, even."

"Positively charming," Carlos said, and gained a kiss in the cheek as an answer.

He glowed, a little, in the tentative retreat of a night that had stretched longer than it had any business doing, even in Night Vale. The great rushing return of sound - the bizarre snow and shivering, joyful winds - had passed. Now it was the lingering dark before dawn, and Cecil was ranting. Words had returned to him in fits and starts, but swiftly enough that he jumped from one topic to another, fidgety, a shapeless being in a man's shape. Now it was about his modern energy supply, though it was possible that he meant the town's. Carlos was tired, it was hard to keep up.

He was also very warm and very comfortable, drifting off gradually to the soft petting in his hair and that deep Voice that spoke quietly, considerate of his drowsing but keeping a comfortable blanket of warm sound.

Metaphors weren't very high in his list of priorities right now.

"—Listeners are great, but they aren't personal priests, you know?" He complained, "Interns are great for that, but Station Management has been gluttonous and they keep falling like flies." For a moment he was furious, an audible rage that Carlos could hear more than see in his face. Then he became sadder, no less angry but it was overwhelmed with melancholy. "Sometime I really miss the good old days. I've been missing them before I remembered, I think. No one does chanting the same way anymore."

"Calm down, old geezer," he joked.

Cecil elbowed him playfully but gingerly in the ribs. Carlos knew he was holding back most of his strength after the Post-Coital Cuddle Disaster their first time together that night, before he knew how physically strong Cecil could be, when motivated, and how delightful it could be.

Not that much of a disaster, really. Carlos had the vague impression he should be reacting differently to the whole my-boyfriend-is-a-Primordial-Being-of-great-power. He couldn't imagine how he was supposed to react, but probably not with cuddling and great sex and interjecting on monologues about ancient warding rituals. 

But it worked for them. Cecil was devoted to the extreme, not to mention ridiculously hard-headed, and Carlos was a hard-working Scientist with a tendency to dedicate himself to his goals. They _would_ make it work. 

"You make me sound so old," he retorted with mock scorn. "I'm a baby compared to some Entities out there. A bit boring for a Voice, really."

"I have a hard time believing that," Carlos stated. Cecil giggle tickled against the naked skin of his shoulder and he borrowed closer to Cecil.

"You never forgot me," Carlos said quietly. It wasn't the thing he had been most afraid of in all this, but the thought of it had hounded him. Made his heart quiver every time Cecil looked at him and there was a moment before he said anything, before recognition was assured.

Admittedly, Cecil tended to look at him with variations on adoring devotion and that hadn't changed any, even when forgetting, even now that he remembered, but he still worried. There were moments when he thought Cecil might have —

"I almost did, sometimes," Cecil confessed, really quiet. Carlos nodded at the confirmation of his hypothesis, but pressed lips together. "But then I realized I was not alone - it's hard to explain, but I'm with you, you know? It's not about Presence, it's that —I love you and live by your side. And I couldn't forget that. I could forget anything, but not you."

"Truly important knowledge haunting my existence," Carlos echoed, a hand smoothing his boyfriend's back absent-mindedly. Cecil hummed, in acceptance or just pleasure, and pressed closer that it ought to be physically possible. His warmth leaned comfortably on the edges of his awareness. They dozed for a time, or at least Cecil did. Carlos' only pretended to, mind too buzzed analyzing data to relax restfully, but too comfortable to focus. He knew, he wanted to say it, but the words were hard to catch.

"I know you don't miss the days you were worshipped as a god." Carlos stated, breaking the silence that seemed to come over the world at times like these, between them and only them.

"Do you? Brilliant Carlos, of course you do." Cecil sounded sleepy and fond. Carlos knew perfectly well he was awake, but he let that be.

"Uhuh. You like this too much."

In the dark, Cecil smiled against his hair. "Not too much. Just better. I like this better."

Carlos closed his eyes and finally settled to sleep. Maybe Cecil didn't need to anymore, but he did.

This little eternity between one day and the next — this was theirs. Everything else could come after. "Good. So do I."

 

 

 

 

 

Cecil was floating.

Just a little above the floor, but definitely floating. His hair was tousled and his eyes crinkled in the corners, little corporeal things that were as much part of him as the Voice, now, even if they hadn't been before. He was grinding his coffee, after waiting for Carlos to wake up for them to leave the bed together. It struck Carlos with how normal it was, something they had done many times before: this ritual of parallels awakenings, bumping into furniture and morning-breath tendernesses.

It settled something deep in him, now that he was awake and the sun was high, and all the impossible beloved things that seemed close and sure in the dark were alight. But unchanging. Neither of them was the wavering kind, not like this, not in this.

I was expecting more tentacles, he thought, as he wiped the sleep from his eyes. Carlos flushed, remembering Station Management and the telepathic experience a while back, but Cecil hadn't moved away from his self-imposed task of coffee-grinding. Which begged the question of how Cecil's telepathy worked, given this new (old?) set of skills.

"Do you think I'm some savage despot?" Cecil asked, offended and not a little hurt when Carlos asked. Carlos would be more compelled to answer coherently if the fact that he said despot so early in the morning wasn't somehow hilarious and so like Cecil.

Neither of them were morning people, but they went about it differently. Carlos was more brusque and Cecil was more sensitive, and neither of them did well without caffeine. An apparent return of full Voice-like abilities and memories hadn't changed that. It was good to know. Really, really good. Good enough to deserve its own embrace.

"No. But you're nosy." And maybe omniscient, but that might be insensitive to ask in an empty stomach.

"And you're absurdly curious, but you don't see me throwing around insults before coffee," Cecil huffed, but seemed mollified enough when Cecil squeezed tighter.

They swayed a little side to side, cheeks touching, knees bumping, even when the coffee machine made an unholy sound. Carlos was more worried about the sounds coming from Cecil, the weight of him resting entirely in against him. For someone so powerful, he felt fragile and brittle in his arms, presence and Voice silent to press close to Carlos' chest and just listen. When all the universe was opened to his ears, he chose to lean on Carlos, listen to Carlos' breath and heart and whatever he was broadcasting into the Ether.

He closed his prickling eyes. Carlos had known himself to be capable of focusing with unwavering purpose on whatever fascinated him before Cecil, but this wasn't fascination and he had clearly underestimated his own ability to emote to a terrifying degree.  
  
The most important part was this: Cecil's voice was the same. It was his Radio Voice, only all the time, only instead of broadcasting in normal waves of sound he was using unknown dimensions to transmit something that if not sound was very similar. More Voice than voice. More Cecil, not less. That would take some getting used to, for the both of them.

But it still cracked with emotion when he spoke with Carlos. That was such a relief. He realized only then that he really didn't know what he would have done if it hadn't.

And right now Cecil's Voice - the truth of him, his natural state - was so _small_. "Oh, Carlos. What have they done to my town?"

"Nothing that can't be fixed. We will make it better, love. I promise."

"And a Scientist never breaks his promises?" Cecil teased, only he wasn't teasing. Carlos kissed his head and evoked all the feelings of affection and trust and adoration towards him. The way Cecil trembled was very satisfying, almost as much as his tense muscles softened.

In the end, it hadn't come down to Carlos. Not really, not completely. Tamika Flynn was right. You had to find yourself to save yourself. Cecil had Remembered. This did not mean there was nothing Lost. It did mean, however, that a great many things were Found. And Carlos was, after all, a Scientist. Where there are certainties, it was his duty and pleasure to Research, Reveal. Rebuild for the sake of the present and the hope of the Future. A Scientist is, perhaps, not always fine, or self-reliant, but he is constantly hoping.

"This one doesn't."

 

 

 

They drove together to work. Someone, probably the Sheriff's Secret Police, had cleaned the streets. How exactly they'd gone about it Carlos wasn't sure, but the tracks in the snow looked suspiciously like dinosaur steps.

Even the rare snow in Night Vale was strange, snowflakes with pastel colors and trailing sparkles.The overall effect was quite charming, littering the roads and creating snowdrifts in the wing. Cecil was very pleased with himself for that. Carlos was pretty sure it was a terrible driving hazard, but the aesthetic was very pretty and suspiciously similar to his favorite sparkly Science pen.

Carlos wanted to ask if he should expect more whether phenomenons, how did he do it, was he controlling it right now or did he just nudge the atmosphere and how far did it extend to — but they had decided to play it as if it were another normal day outside the house. Even with most bugs and radios fried from Cecil's linguistic slip of biblical dimensions, it was better to keep it between them so far.

Then he remembered Cecil was telepathic, among other curious genetic quirks.

(Or was it metaphysical? Surely metaphysical being shared characteristics with their offspring, however they came to be. And Cecil was very solid, but he had assured him before their more, er, extraneous activities last night that he was not using this body as a host, or anything of the sort.)

Carlos, suddenly quite alarmed, thought his question loudly. Beside him Cecil snickered.

'No, Carlos, I am not the Messiah. Although I can see where the story is similar - I did ask my Mom about it, you know, before, and she agreed.' He wrinkled his nose. 'I'm not my own son, if that's what you're wondering. More like — a full on transplant from the Void to the Human. Not a very fun process, let me tell you, I was a very disgruntled baby.'

Carlos opened his mouth and closed it, the decided to just focus on what he wanted to know. His hands, he noticed absent-mindedly, were shaking. The calling of discovery made his blood hot and fast, but this he needed to know for himself.

This had to be more than overwhelming for Cecil, he reminded himself. He had hated that Cecil had been so confused for what had felt like an eternity, but had really been less than a month. That he seemed to be perfectly fine now, despite having basically regained a completely different and unfathomable form of existence was a big change, even for Night Vale. Now it was his turn to be baffled and out-of-depth, and everything in him clamored to go study and research right now.

Cecil, bless him, understood. His hands were shaking too, when they held his, just a little. Carlos suspected he was keeping himself firmly rooted in the physical plane, and he did not envy him in the least.

'I'm as I always was. Just, you know, less mystical Voice, more normal human Voice. And more squishy,' he added thoughtfully. 'I was never this squishy before.'

'I like it,' Carlos thought, and poked his cheek. He left the car to the sound of Cecil's joking mental affront and grinned all the way up the stairs.

His team of scientists were already there, the ones who hadn't been held up by the crazy weather. Most of them were too absorbed in their samples of glittery ice to look up, but Petra gave him a thumbs up and Marcia waved. It was silent here, soothing, and he sat for ten minutes, stating at the crack in the white paint of the wall.

The first giggle surprised him, but soon he was snickering helplessly, hands pressed against his mouth. Marcia gave him an odd look, but he kept giggling.

"Fuck me sideways. My boyfriend made me sparkly snow," he whispered between snorts. "This is _so neat_."

 

 

It wasn't like Cecil went up to the City Council and shouted, _Hey, I'm back, bitches. And this time, it's personal!_  Mostly because Carlos had made a face when he'd mentioned that intention and proposed a better plan, involving more subtlety and less open antagonism. Cecil had reassured him that he wasn't under any danger of City Council harming him. He couldn't break the vows of Hospitality that embraced and tethered every Night Vale citizen and evict them from the town, but in the grand scope of Night Vale's reality, they were rather puny compared to him.

Carlos was only somewhat mollified by that.

But strangely, or maybe not, things don't change much on the surface.

 The Erikas were still in a great mood and decide to share their godly good mood by knitting up a proverbial storm of scarves and mittens. Carlos and his team research the sudden, literal snowstorm, going out to the streets to gather as much of the stuff they can and stashing it in the fridge before the normal, returned Night Vale heat melted it completely. It meant Cecil walked around with sparkles in his hair for days, which, Cecil freely admitted, was probably the subconscious goal of the snow in the first place.

The Sheriff's Secret Police was still miffed at Cecil for destroying their surveillance equipment, but the sudden fall of snow has them busy. The Mayoral race goes on, dirty and occasionally bloody. The Faceless Old Woman Who Lives In Your Home knew the Voice has Remembered, but she did nothing worse than leaving shiny desert rocks as offering around the house, but Cecil figured that that's alright as long as she realized that no, he's not going to break Voice etiquette and get involved in human political matters, and anyway he was still a journalist, objectivity was important.

She wasn't very convinced. To be fair, he had had a bad habit of sticking his nose in human affairs, back when he was more He and he, and he was going to get involved, eventually. Just not yet. Besides, he had lots of room to play with, technically being a human-emeritus these days.

Thing was, Cecil didn't hide, either. When asked he said he remembered and forgot exactly as much as he ought to and was allowed to. Which wasn't a lie. Cecil allowed himself to remember. There was no one higher in the hierarchy, even if the rest of the hierarchy didn't know that.

That first broadcast after he Remembered was both bizarre and comforting. Cecil Palmer, Herald of Night Vale, Voice Regent had always had a certain amount of omniscience, as was proper of a good radio show host. Cecil Palmer, Voice of Night Vale, was having a rather hard time parsing the amount of information he had access to.

But it was worth it, so worth it when he grasped the microphone and opened his mouth, when he felt every citizen of Night Vale listening to him from their new radios. That terrible silence that had accompanied him all his mortal lifetime was gone, the pressing numbness filled with sound since he had Remembered. He was Whole, at peace, but it had only been in the radio, remembering Carlos' kisses and thinking of the future that had started really feel like himself.  
  
For the first time in His long, long life, the Voice of Night Vale was being Heard. It made him so happy that his physical form warped and trilled with the echo of old Songs and floated some ten inches off the ground.

He could picture, with the remains of his human imagination and not-so-human precognition, what would happen after. At night, Cecil would come home. Sometimes he and Carlos would go out, or one of them would get take away and they'd eat on the couch and leave sauce stains everywhere. There would be cuddling and good conversation and sex. Much of it would still the same, some of it not so much. In many ways it would remind the of the first golden days of their relationship, after that night under the Arby's lights, when they really started to get to know each other in earnest. In may ways it would be completely different. Better. Cecil was now truly Cecil, and Carlos was surer and more settled in his skin than ever.

There was Strex Corp to be dealt with, Reeducation and the City Council and Station Management. He needed more interns , and these ones would _survive._ And perhaps they wouldn't mind part-timing as actual priests and helping to make sure there would be no non consensual sacrifices going on. The buyer of Lot 37 was going to have the revelation of their life when they realized their purchase was not just community radio show host and He was not pleased with them, nor particularly inclined to prolong that lifetime. Much had been Lost, and would remain Lost forever. But there would be new tomorrows, the Sun and the Stars He had created once would turn over the Desert of his making and the Town that belonged to the small, terrible, brilliant mortals that were not His anymore but that Their Voice Loved, so dearly.

Cecil could barely wait. But first, there was this:

"The air around you is unusually cold. You have never been this cold before, and it cuts at you, like a terrible dagger of silent Nothingness. Suddenly, a Voice comes, flowing in the sibilant wind. It is the Voice of change, and justice, and hope, and you smile, because you have been waiting for it your whole life. And without noticing, you are warm again, and the silence is shaken and shed like an old skin. 

"Welcome to Night Vale."

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://searchingforserendipity25.tumblr.com)


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